About The Museum

Welcome Message

We would like to welcome you to this new website for Number Twenty Nine, ESB’s Georgian House Museum. Whilst the museum has had a website in the past we have revamped it significantly to reflect the temporary closure of the museum to facilitate the construction of a new ESB Head Office Complex. This construction work is due to commence in 2017 and it is planned that it will take three years to substantially complete these works.

Local History

The development of Fitzwilliam Street Lower was approved by the Wide Street commissioners in 1791, and the first houses were built by late 1793.

The street was part of the vast estate originally by the Viscounts Fitzwilliam. Leases in the area were strict and laid down very clear guidelines relating to the size and proportions of houses to be built, as well as the materials used.

The Beatty Family

The first occupant of this house was Mrs. Olivia Beatty who moved here in November 1794. Mrs. Beatty, nee Bell, was the mother of seven children, Edward, Thomas, David, Robert, Frederick, Maria and Olivia. Edward her eldest was eleven, when Mrs. Beatty moved in, with Olivia perhaps her youngest child, being just two years old.

She married her husband David in 1782 at the age of 21, in St. Anne’s Parish Church in Dawson Street.

Georgian Dublin

Number Twenty Nine is Dublin's Georgian House Museum. Visitors take a tour from the basement to the attic, through rooms which have been furnished with original artefacts as they would have been in the years 1790 to 1820.

Number Twenty Nine Lower Fitzwilliam Street, was first occupied in 1794, during a time of great change and expansion in Ireland's capital.

Toy Collection

The ordinary objects used by people everyday, can reveal much about the lives of contemporary citizens of Dublin. Some of the interesting most pieces on show in the museum include two early 19th centaury dolls houses in the nursery, and illustrate the pastimes of the children who would have lived here.

In the Beatty family, at least three of the boys, went to Trinity College, where they probably were boarders.